LAS VEGAS – The Power Slap promotion championed by UFC CEO Dana White got a big boost this past Friday.
When former UFC fighter Paige VanZant made her slap fighting debut in Las Vegas, she became arguably the most popular social media figure to compete in the promotion. VanZant landed the cleaner shots over three rounds and won a unanimous decision over Christine Wolmarans by a trio of 30-25 scores at Fontainebleau Hotel & Casino.
VanZant’s popularity on OnlyFans, as well as other social media platforms, as well fights for BKFC, made her a celebrity slapper of sorts, and White thinks it’s one more rung on the ladder to make Power Slap potentially bigger than the UFC over time, he said.
“I said it – go back. Some of you were there and heard me in the early days,” White said after Power Slap 8. “I said, ‘This will be the biggest sport in the world. This will be bigger than the UFC. This will be bigger than the UFC.’ Now you can remember I said that, everybody will be like, ‘Oh, he’s a f*cking nut,’ and all that sh*t. And then I’ll see you in a few years and we’ll talk again.
“This is one of those events – it’s like the UFC again. When we put on a live event, nobody leaves a UFC live event and goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t ever want to see one of these again.’ That’s the same thing with the Power Slap. It continues to grow. This was our eighth event. We’ve only done eight events. And if you look at the success of this thing and just eight shows, we will get better every time we do it. The athletes will get better. There will be people that come that continue to draw and people want to see Slap. It’s all just a huge work in progress. It will just get better every time we do it.”
White thinks someone like VanZant, who has north of 3 million Instagram followers, can help raise the bar, either by attendance or competition. Since she left the UFC, VanZant has been known for her popularity as a social media influencer as much as her combat sports pursuits, if not more, and she has talked openly about making more money in 24 hours on OnlyFans than she did when she was in the UFC.
White is banking on social media to draw new fans, not traditional media.
“It’s like all the slap fighters vs. the world,” White said. “Everybody’s talking sh*t on the internet and f*cking writing sh*tty stories and all that stuff. I tell these guys, ‘F*cking embrace it. It’s beautiful. It’s a great thing. You know what you don’t want? The guys who write no f*cking stories and don’t say anything about it.’ We’re building this sport a completely different way, and it’s not built through the media. We’re not building this sport through media. This is the future of how sports are going to be built, and I’m showing the whole f*cking world how it’s done.
“Everybody that you bring in, especially somebody that already has a certain level of fame and a certain level of followers, you attract new people to it. There’s no doubt about it. Tonight in that room, the most powerful influencers in the world are in that room every time we put on an event. These kids create content for a living. That’s what they do, and nothing goes more viral, no matter who you are, how many followers you have (than Power Slap).”
